There we have it, uh, Regis....

[o_lucky_man]

There's a video that's been making the rounds lately of Steven Spielberg watching the Oscar nominations for Jaws in 1976. To wit:

Click to view

Watching the video there's a few things that pop out at me.

1. Steven Spielberg was close friends with Joe Spinell?  Really? Who the fuck knew? It's kind of sad and revealing that the director of the highest grossing film

Comments

[salvagejob]

*waves* I agree! I agree about Spielberg! I love Jaws, just love it. And I especially love 1975, a magical year for me, my last one in the States for a while, my last year in this particularly amazing mansion I lived in outside Chicago, and the end of Phase I, Childhood, at least for me.

Now I gotta go see if I can get the vids to play and find out who Spinell is. What you had for lunch is probably not as interesting as what went on circa 1975.

[o_lucky_man]

Joe Spinell was an American character actor (now deceased) who specialized in the 70's and 80's in playing sleazy weirdos in z-grade movies with titles like Maniac and The Last Horror Film. I was well familiar with him in the 80's due to my subscription to Fangoria magazine. Not exactly the type of dude I'd be expecting to see watching the Oscar noms with an A-list director.

I guess I don't know--or have forgotten--much about you. You lived in a mansion and then outside of the US?

[salvagejob]

For two years we lived in an old house outside Chicago. It was a mansion when it was built, although I doubt you'd call it that today, if you were wandering past. But it was technically a Victorian mansion in that it had servants quarters built in (complete with back staircase!) and a coach house out back and a port cochere. It was an amazingly cool house. It had a billiard room, a massive foyer, a big old staircase with red carpeting and a landing, and one room that was inexplicably filled with mattresses. There were three interconnecting bedrooms on the second floor and you could close all their doors to the hall but still travel among them. There was a wind room, a playroom with windows on three sides and an archway on the fourth. There was a marble sink in my bedroom, or so I recall. I mean, amazingly cool house

[salvagejob]

I guess I should add, too, that my parents did everything themselves. So my mom went insane just with vacuuming, just with sorting the mail (there was so much mail, it still kind of haunts her) -- to say nothing of the upkeep an old house needs, like tuckpointing the chimneys and god knows what all. There was a laundry chute too! I just remembered that. And hairy graduate students living in the servants quarters and the coach house (1975 remember), so I never got to go in there except when my dad was painting it before selling. I kind of wonder what people do with those rooms now. Actually, I think I don't want to know.

[o_lucky_man]

Wow that sounds like an amazing place. Have you ever written anything about living there?