Tuesday night, I went with some WOW colleagues to the theatrical screening of HBO’s Elaine Stritch At Liberty at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, inside the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. After our names were found at the check-in table, a small miracle, we were made to bypass the red-carpeted area and use the regular sidewalk. Damn. But, as the longhaired Anthony Hopkins was fielding reporters on the carpet, Elaine Stritch, her very own self, was yakking it up with ordinary folks on the sidewalk, bless her. As I brushed by, I gave her a look, a kind of wide-eyed look of bemusement and surprise at seeing her so close. It was a look that she mistook for an acknowledgement of some former friendship that she’d remember later, and she turned from her yakking and grabbed my arm. It was a moment, and if anyone asks, she said, “Stephen, hi.” But she didn’t. I’m just saying.

Continue…