Autobiography Pt. 41

JS:  --never met before?

SL:  [unt] never mentioned you[?].  They hadn’t met.  Isn’t that funny?  It must have been quite a night.  Where did you eat?

JS:  At a place called Mirabella’s on the Sunset Strip.  It’s near Bob’s place.

In fact, he usually has a table all to himself when he sits there.  I must tell you--interrupt your little gossip--when we ate there last time, Bob came, and always dominates the table discussion, and the waiter kind of knows about it--

SL:  Who could dominate anything with you there, Julie?

JS:  Wait a min--no, I’m about to tell you.  So I introduced the fellow who was sitting with me, and the waiter:  “Really?”  It was Ray Bradbury.  He happened to be a Ray Bradbury fan.  Bob was in--

SL:  Great, that’s great.  Yeah, that’s a good story.

JS:  I won’t interrupt anymore.

JS:  Here’s a question:  If you had written a story and it came out approximately six months later, did you re-read it?

SL:  Some of them I did.  Some of them I did, yes.  But I didn’t have time, just like today [unt as Julie interrupts]

JS:  The reason I say that, sometimes I say,  “Hey, this story isn’t as good as I thought it was six months ago, and you can see why.”  I did that all the time even though I edited almost word for word--six months later, it’s different.  And covers--”God,”  I said,  “How’d I ever do a cover like that?!”  You must have had that experience.

SL:  No, I was my biggest fan, I loved my--I’ll tell ya, I [unt] today, if I’m working on a movie, some development, and I have to go back and research an old story--I’ll read an old THOR, or an old IRON MAN, or a DOCTOR STRANGE that I did a million years ago--”Jesus, I didn’t know I was this good!  WOW!!  My god, was I writing this?  It’s the funniest thing!  I love it!”

JS:  [unt].  Did he say,  “I have no recollection of even writing this story!”

JS:  Did Bernstein work for you?  He was a very bright boy, but we could never--he was very wordy, he could never stop writing.  Do you remember that?