There are stories that, for better or worse, stay with you forever. You just can’t shake them. If I squint and close my eyes, I can almost see myself in early 2007 and how it went, sitting there high atop a rooftop patio at the shabby, glitzy,…

Take one thing with another, you really haven’t lived until in the middle of a cocktail party your phone lights up and you angle the phone so everyone can see who is calling and tonight’s caller happens to be Charlie Manson, the hippy-Svengali,…

Vince Bucci/Getty Jack Nicholson is ambling down the stairs of his place on Mulholland Drive, in Los Angeles, a little late, having just zipped up. He’s lived here for more than 30 years – a two-story stucco-type pad bought for $80,000 that is packed…

Jean Baptiste Lacroix/WireImage/Getty One evening not long ago, the director Quentin Tarantino picked at a Greek omelet inside a Los Angeles diner and suddenly found himself at a loss for words and unwilling to explicate. This is astounding, of…

Michael Tran/FilmMagic/Getty Has any movie star in the history of movie stars ever been more perfect than George Clooney? Look at him now, sitting in his house high up in the Hollywood Hills, off-white khakis, matching socks, spotless tan desert…

Christopher Walken: Please send us a communication. Where are you from? What’s in your mind? And what’s with your hair? 2008 There are lots if spooky actors in the world but none more spooky than Christopher Walken. He is enormous with spooky. It…

Ozzy Osbourne was slowing down and getting sober just before the premiere of MTV's 'The Osbournes' in 2000

Barry King/WireImage/Getty The last time I saw Chris Farley was early last summer, in the middle of the night, at the Sky Bar, a breezy, cool, happening joint on Sunset Boulevard, in L.A. He eased on out of his limo as big as ever, in black…

On a sunny day out along the Pacific Coast Highway, heading up past Malibu in a dark SUV, destination a biker-boozer-surfer roadhouse called Neptune’s Net, Gerard Butler – Gerry to his friends – has his eye cast out to the sparkling blue sea and just…

J. Emilio Flores/Redux At a restaurant called Craft, in Los Angeles, near the new CAA building, outside, under sunlight, not on a couch but on the warm, warm ground, Robert Downey Jr. lights a cigarette, takes a sip of his double espresso, listens…

Despite the Hollywood pedigree, the A-list wife, the Oscar nomination, Josh Brolin just can't seem to stay out of trouble. Is it bad luck or is he just a self-destructive guy? Up on the rooftop of a small building in Santa Monica - lots of sunshine…

Stefania D'Alessandro/Getty In a rehearsal hall somewhere in Switzerland, Phil Collins is belting out some tunes in front of an 18-piece band, getting ready to go on a small tour to support a new album. He looks happy, snapping his fingers, bopping…

NOT LONG AGO, A FREAK NAMED Grady Stiles sucked on a Seagram’s 7 and Coke, fired up a Pall Mall, and stared at the moist image of actress Sherilyn Fenn and her genetically fine boobies on the TV screen. This was in his trailer home near Tampa,…

The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do as a surfer is walk to the nose of my board, hang ten, cruise along like that, every little piggy happily dangling off the tip, me just minding my own business, not a care in the world, before cross-stepping back…

Frazer Harrison/Getty You’d really think that those kids on Glee would be super-duper extra-special entertaining. On TV, they’re dizzyingly fun to watch. They sing. They dance. They lace their bake-sale cupcakes with weed. They get involved in…

Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic/Getty You may be wondering what Rodney Dangerfield, at the age of eighty-two, after nearly a lifetime in the business of making other people laugh, is up to these days. Mainly, he’s bathrobed and hanging out in his airy,…

Ulf Andersen/Getty Images CHUCK PALAHNIUK IS PACKING BOXES, large boxes and small boxes. Into some of the boxes go Whitman’s Samplers, chocolate-covered cherries, necklaces strung by him with beads that spell out the names of the addressees, small…

Denis J. Tangney/Getty The other day, on a Tuesday, shortly before the noon hour, Bert Kreischer splashed a bit of Peachtree schnapps into a glass of orange juice, topped it off with some vodka and thought he’d probably skip class. He was a student…

Living by the Numbers The first time I saw a pocket calculator, something shifted inside me. Those plastic buttons and tiny lights seemed to hold all of life’s answers. Then my delight in the damn things took me to a darker place. Down in my…

One man's life-changing, relationship-straining quest for the perfect scent. I don't know about you, but I don't think life is worth living without a hobby or two. My hobbies have included: model airplanes (lots of noise, lots of expensive crashes),…