The Neil Simon shoot.

I finally secured an agent whilst in school after much looking around. In LA, my people need to talk to your people so you need an agent! They were the same people that handled the great photographer then Herb Ritts thanks to my mentor Paul Jasmin who hooked it up! I thought my career was all set to explode but nothing happened for 6 months…9 months… I decided to walk and look for someone else and found a small agency Outline that was starting out. 

Boom! 

The phone finally rang and New York Times wanted me to shoot the great playwright Neil Simon for the cover page of the Theatre section as he was launching his new play 'Rumors'.  

Say what!!!!!!!!!?????!!!!! The man that wrote ' Barefoot In The Park ' and ' The Odd Couple '..an American treasure and Pulitzer Prize winner? Christmas came early.

Coincidentally, I was living on Sunset Blvd then in the rent control district and Mr Simon's house was just up the road in the high rent district unlike mine! Nestled in the Hollywood Hills, I arrived in my beat up Honda with all my equipment and no assistant. How glamorous.

When I rang the doorbell the housekeeper let me in and showed me to the living room where I chose a spot to do Mr Simon's portrait. 

" Mr Simon will be with you in a minute. " . Just like in the movies I thought. This after all was my first sneak peak into the house of the rich and famous.

The silence was deafening. There was a certain eeriness in the air in there.

In walks Mr Simon with barely any eye contact with me and sat right down starring into my lens.

Damn, I knew this was going to be a tough one. But he writes comedy I thought?? There's an old theatre saying " Dying is easy; comedy is hard. "

There was hardly any conversation and for me it's very very rare. It lasted a whole 15 min ( but felt forever ) and off he walked into the wilderness of his mansion.  

I packed my stuff with my tail between my legs and off I went downhill (literally) to my happy ghetto apartment.  

I later found out that his marriage then was breaking apart and his daughter lost her husband in an auto accident. So that explained it and I felt a bit more relieved. I thought it was me!

A week later, there it was on the front page on the New York Times section. Things were looking up. 

Photo : Shot with a 150mm lens wide open to blur the background. I lit it with a raw light and some barn doors to control the spill. The print was then sepia toned. I shot 24 tedious frames. I tried tilting the camera in some shots to create some movement as there were too many verticals in the shot. It always better to do some variations just in case as it's no use doing a whole shoot framed the same way throughout.

Tips : Your impression of someone can be so wrong and you also have no control over the situation the subject is in or experiencing right then which will affect your portrait. If they had a bad day, you're pretty much screwed! ( unless he is a really good actor! ) You just got to keep your eye on the ball and do what you do best; light it, compose it and shoot it in focus! — at Hollywood Hills.

Photo : @russel wong