A messenger just dropped off a copy of The Meaning of Life: Wisdom, Humor, and Damn Good Advice from 64 Extraordinary Lives. It’s a compilation of Esquire’s great “What I’ve Learned” interviews, and included are two I had the pleasure of doing: with Jerry Lewis and Billy Bob Thornton. Check it out!
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Articles that have been published in Esquire Magazine.
Two interviews of mine in a recent book from Esquire
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010The Other Baron Cohen: A Narrated Biography – Esquire
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Meet Ash, cousin of Sacha, who has quietly been directing not-remotely-funny movies in Hollywood for years – and who told the man behind Brüno to stay away from comedy
Originally appeared in Esquire Magazine July, 2009
BY: Amy Wallace
Ash Baron Cohen’s father and his uncle — who is Sacha Baron Cohen’s father — were in the shmatte business together.
Our fathers were working-class Jews who were sent out of London during the blitz to Wales, where they went to school and were the only Jews in a completely non-Jewish environment. They learned quickly that they had to stand up for themselves. They were both creative rebels in many ways. And it probably has rubbed off on the two of us. I think Sash [rhymes with ash] and I are both very intrigued with the idea of mixing reality with perceptions of reality. Click to continue »
Viggo Mortensen – Esquire
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006Originally appeared in Esquire March, 2006
Eats Roadkill, Speaks Danish.
By Amy Wallace
Viggo Mortensen listens to a lot of AM radio. The forty-seven-year-old actor doesn’t enjoy this hobby, exactly. But if the vitriol spewed by conservative talk jocks is what tens of millions of Americans listen to, he figures he ought to listen, too. He just likes to hear what’s being said.
What was being said late last summer, however, was hard for him to take. In the dead of August, Cindy Sheehan had parked her beat-up motor home on a hot, dusty road outside of Crawford, Texas, not far from George W. Bush’s family compound. The California mother and former minister wanted to talk to the president about her son, Casey, a soldier who had been killed in Iraq. So she’d set up camp in the path of Bush’s motorcade and vowed to wait him out. Click to continue »
Jerry Lewis – Esquire
Sunday, January 1st, 2006
What I’ve Learned
Originally published in Esquire, January 1, 2006
Jerry Lewis: Comedian, 79, Las Vegas
INTERVIEWED BY: Amy Wallace
Hey, Penny! Forty-three years, Penny’s been in my office. She’s something else. She doesn’t let me get away with anything. Penny, bring me an orange soda, honey. You haven’t done a goddamn thing all day.
I will tell you about interviews: I’ve had them run from two and a half minutes to nine hours. Rarely anything in between. If I get to an interview and I can see they’re not that interested, I tell them, “Since the surgery, I get these heart spasms.” And they’re gone.